Kindley is displeased with the Senate compromise over the filibuster. So...he's comparing the compromise made in the Senate with Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler. Really. And he seems to be arguing that all compromises are bad, because, y'know, the Allies appeased the Nazis.

OK, time for Gate City to say that the local party and its chairman just don't matter in these modern times. That may have some validity in organizational terms, but really, do you think this kind of stuff is helpful to the local Republicans?

Friedman: "As a nation, we have a mounting education deficit, energy deficit, budget deficit, health care deficit and ambition deficit. The administration is in denial on this, and Congress is off on Mars. And yet, when I look around for the group that has both the power and interest in seeing America remain globally focused and competitive -- America's business leaders -- they seem to be missing in action."

Michael Young in Slate: "Those who accuse the Bush administration of incompetence in the Middle East because of events in Iraq may soon have to temper that with an assessment of its shrewder behavior in Lebanon."

Encouraging, although he rushes by the problem of disarming Hezbollah.

A Little Urbanity says plans for the redevelopment of the Burlington Industries site make it sound like we'll get Potemkin-on-Friendly. "Starmount seems to think that building Disneylike, fake downtowns is a good thing."

Patrick Eakes on the gloomy state of Greensboro's private clubs: "I have learned that the Cardinal Golf and Country Club will be sold to a few existing members...Triad private clubs have experienced a different type of trickle down economics - the one where nothing trickles down."

Update: Patrick now says the sale is likely to occur, not a done deal. I apologize for publishing the error.

First the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page report on class (im)mobility in America. Then the WSJ edit page ran a rebuttal. I asked, tongue in cheek, whether we should believe the reporters and researchers or the paid ideologue who wrote the opinion piece.

Yesterday, in a letter to the WSJ, researchers David I. Levine and Bhashkar Mazumder say opinioneer Alan Reynolds "confuses two distinct issues" and is the only person to read the data in the cheerful way he chooses. Today Reynolds rebuts.

Lenslinger on the impact of personal journalism on TV news: "Now, a new revolution is about to be televised. Tiny lenses are popping in the most unlikely of devices, powerful editing is just a laptop away and personal websites are racing towards critical mass. How long before my oversized fancy-cam looks like an early 80’s bag phone?"

As the tech gets better, so will the quality of the video. From staged events like the implosion, the amateurs will be posting good-looking stuff. The real revolution will be the profusion good-enough footage from phones and other cheap portables that happen to be on-hand when news breaks -- breadth of coverage is the key, not just more movies of the same things.

That said, I think the digital stills I took and posted about an hour after the buildng came down were of sufficient quality...I'd have taken video, but I wasn't sure that my blog software supported the format.

They didn't let in dogs or even people wearing t-shirts and shorts, so I was an infrequent visitor, but I'm sorry to see it go. The food was not bad for club food and you can see all the way to the mountains from up there. I hope they find an interesting use for the space.